… but I feel like this today:
Whatever is going around, as I’ve heard no one say recently, makes me want to sprawl on a chair arm for comfort.
Wednesday
14
Mar 12
A random assemblage of stuff and things
My favorite meme of all time has become a campus group’s poster:
That, of course, is Joseph Ducreux, who was a French portrait painter at the court of Louis XVI and after the French Revolution. He liked physiognomy, assessing one’s personality by their facial expressions, hence his unorthodox portraiture, like this self-portait and, of course, the very famous Internet joke. You can’t even find the original set anymore, so buried are they amongst everyone’s contribution.
Two students showed this video in class today during a demonstration about advertising. The gasps from the rest of the class were great. See if you can figure out where this is going:
Happy birthday to The Birmingham News, which turned 124 today. This is the June 20, 1900, front page:
So the paper was 12 years old at the time. I haven’t seen any of the first volume’s front pages.
Things to read: Ad execs bullish on digital, marketers on social: Data reveals ‘disconnect’ with agencies:
Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.
The findings, which are part of new, detailed analysis coming out of Advertiser Perceptions’ Fall 2011 survey on ad executive attitudes and optimism about media, show the overall index for digital -– including online display, search and video advertising –- trending upward, but the sentiment appears to be driven primarily by agencies. That insight is interesting, because the bottom line of big agencies appears to be benefitting from their continuing shift toward a greater reliance on digital media, according to a Pivotal Research analysis released Monday (OMD, March 13).
“But there is a discrepancy in the way marketers and agencies are seeing it,” says Randy Cohen, a partner in AP — which produces an ongoing series of ad industry tracking studies under its Advertiser Intelligence Reports banner, including this one. “It’s a disconnect,” he says, adding, “But agencies tend to do what marketers want them to.”
If that’s the case, social media should be the primary beneficiary, according to Cohen, because marketer sentiment is building much more favorably toward social networks versus the rest of the digital mix.
Things to read from my Samford blog:
7
Mar 12
Where I brag on CBS-42
I like to poke fun at television news, but it is all in good fun. I have a great respect for the hard work they do and the service they can provide. And I’m not just saying that because my wife is a former (Emmy-nominated) producer. Birmingham, despite its relative small size, is a great television market. This is the place for sports, the hardest weather market in the country and has as much, and more, news as the next place. (And as of this year and the county’s bankruptcy — the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the country — they’ll have plenty of stories for a long, long time.) Because of all of that they pull in great talent.
And that talent is very gracious, across the local industry really, but specifically I must point out the nice folks at WIAT CBS-42.
Here’s why. One of our classes takes field trips to learn about the various aspects of the media industry, and between the four (or five) sections of that class we hit all the stations in town. I visit WIAT when I teach the class and we went there today. Today also happened to be the day that the bingo trial, the biggest criminal trial of the year where defends were accused of using campaign contributions to buy and sell votes on state gambling legislation, came down with their verdicts: not guilty.
So it was a busy day in their newsroom, but we had a great tour. The students enjoyed themselves, learned about the business first hand and met some of the local experts, talking with reporters furiously working in their edit bays, meeting people like the assignment editor in the newsroom, watching the producer make his sausage in his booth and talking with nice, engaging and talented people like meteorologist Mark Prater:
It was a great tour. They all are. The local media is very kind to our program at Samford.
29
Feb 12
A collection of things
And now, the day that leaps. I hope you enjoy at least 25 percent of this video that explains the quadrennial correction:
And now for a truly creepy video:
The first version of that story, which I saw on television and haven’t yet discovered online, had the father irate. After which he confronted his family and, writing later (to Target, I think) admitted that he had not been up-to-date on the details of his home. That wouldn’t be an awkward or uncomfortable conversation, would it?
Visited Intermark on a field trip today. This is the second year I’ve taken students there, and they do a great job. One of their account executives tells the class about the work he does. A public relations expert talks about her day. Two former internships who now have full time jobs there talk about their experience — they pitch to actual clients in their internships — and then there’s the social media talks. Media planning, the creative types and then the video production crews show off their work.
The students come away with an idea of what happens in a full service public relations and marketing shop. (It is an intro course.) Some people get a sense of what they might like to do; others may decide this isn’t for them. Someone asked about if they get discounts on car deals with the dealerships they promote.
Outside, the first dandelion of the season:
Things to read:
And now for a startling graphic
Burlington Free Press resizing
Photogs, visual artists, historians rejoice
Stuff from elsewhere: AT&T Customers Petition CEO To Stop Throttling Unlimited Data Plans
Facebook cheat sheet: Sizes and dimensions
Tomorrow: Work! Meetings! A new section of the site! More!
22
Feb 12
Don’t forget your hat
It isn’t that there’s a statue in the back of the truck — it must be contemporary, you can’t imagine any classic piece from the Vatican’s collection would be carried around in the back of a Nissan.
It can’t be that the rope is looped around the neck, though at first blush that does make you stop and wonder about the driver’s mood when they put it there.
it is the way she just stares through you.
I have a rope around my neck. I’m in a … Nissan.
Check out the latest on The Samford Crimson. It is a nicely colorful front page this week, post-Step Sing.
The copy is pretty good, except for the typos that slipped through the cracks at 2:30 this morning. The editorial staff is always chagrined when I point them out at 10 a.m.
Things to read: This is severe weather awareness week in Alabama. Were you aware the person in charge of maintaining the tornado sirens has been placed on leave? (Public service note: Do not rely on outdoor sirens. Watch the weather. Buy a weather radio or download the weather apps.)
Alabama’s exports? So glad you asked. Just happened to stumble across a story about that today, hence this entire paragraph, and the subsequent BBJ blockquote:
Alabama exports rose to a record high in 2011, according to a press release from Gov. Robert Bentley’s office.
Exports from the state increased 15.4 percent in 2011 to $17.9 billion, which was up from $15.5 billion last year.
Two prominent non-profit news outlets are shutting down. Alan Mutter has a terrific analysis:
Evidently beguiled by seeing their stories in the pages of the New York Times, two high-profile journalism start-ups failed at building sufficient audience for their own brands.
[…]
Yet, each of them seems to have stumbled in a different way.
The Chicago Cooperative concentrated all but one of its hires on journalists, including several prominent and well-compensated individuals who devoted most of their efforts to putting the best possible work into the NYT. While readers may have appreciated the articles in the newspaper, scant attention appears to have been paid to converting them into individual or corporate supporters of the venture itself.
The Bay Citizen, on the other hand, invested heavily on development …
He goes on to run through the numbers, and his commenters comment on the quality and the competition. The earlier portion of his analysis is cutting, but he has sources who suggest that both Cooperative and the Citizen were working in a bad model.
The only thing worse than a bad model is bad model security. What happens if that rope slips? Where does that garden decoration go from there? Gnomes are so much cheaper. And only slightly more creepy. The Travelocity gnome has helped a lot in that respect.
